Mervin Smucker (2016). Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

Mindfulness, a term from contemporary Buddhist writers such as Thich Nhat Hanh, has become popular in contemporary psychotherapy. Another term for mindfulness is awareness. However, rather than focusing on awareness as a means to an end—such as an insight or a conclusion—mindfulness emphasizes a state of being aware in the present moment in a non-judgmental way. Thus the practice of mindfulness can help a person become calm, receptive, and less attached to certain habits of mind and painful emotional states involving fear, anxiety, depression. In this manner, mindfulness can be a useful tool in facilitating therapeutic work, creating a non-judgmental, “neutral” mental state from which to observe one’s own habitual responses of thought and feeling.